User Interface Design Tips

http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/userInterfaceDesign.html

• User need to know how to work the UI that you designed for them so keep the UI consistant throughout the design.
• Use a interface flow diagram.

E.g.

The flow diagrams used is to form the architecture of the app and how the user can move through the stages. It can also be used to form the behavior of the user. It gives me the chance as a designer to see if the system of the app will work. The main purpose of the UI flow diagram is to see if the UI is useable.

• Design the navigation left to right, top-bottom as in western cultures this is the format that we read in. It will seems more natural.
• Colour should be used appropriately. If you use it as a highlighter make sure that you use something else to highlight it as well as people might be colour blind. Also use it sparingly so as to not overwhelm people.
• Use the contrast blue e.g blue on white is easy to read, red on blue isn't
• Align the fields. Left justify so make all the fields line up in a straight line. MAke the other fields right aligned so that it is organised. Make it is visually appealing and efficient.

Constantine and Lockwood have a set of principles that guide UI design

1. The structure principle. Your design should organize the user interface purposefully, in meaningful and useful ways based on clear, consistent models that are apparent and recognizable to users, putting related things together and separating unrelated things, differentiating dissimilar things and making similar things resemble one another. The structure principle is concerned with your overall user interface architecture.

2. The simplicity principle. Your design should make simple, common tasks simple to do, communicating clearly and simply in the user’s own language, and providing good shortcuts that are meaningfully related to longer procedures.

3. The visibility principle. Your design should keep all needed options and materials for a given task visible without distracting the user with extraneous or redundant information. Good designs don’t overwhelm users with too many alternatives or confuse them with unneeded information.

4. The feedback principle. Your design should keep users informed of actions or interpretations, changes of state or condition, and errors or exceptions that are relevant and of interest to the user through clear, concise, and unambiguous language familiar to users.

5. The tolerance principle. Your design should be flexible and tolerant, reducing the cost of mistakes and misuse by allowing undoing and redoing, while also preventing errors wherever possible by tolerating varied inputs and sequences and by interpreting all reasonable actions reasonable.

6. The reuse principle. Your design should reuse internal and external components and behaviors, maintaining consistency with purpose rather than merely arbitrary consistency, thus reducing the need for users to rethink and remember.